Lewis Lapham

"I have only one criteria for putting things into the quarterly, which is that the writing is good. It's not so much about it being academic," declared Lewis Lapham, editor of Lapham's Quarterly, at a reading hosted by the literary journal at the National Arts Club on Monday, Nov. 17.

Mr. Lapham, his round tortoise-frame spectacles resting firmly on the bridge of his nose, was talking about his recent efforts to get more young people to attend readings and events hosted by the quarterly. "For the fun of it," he explained.

"My editors are young, they are all under 30, and I trust them," said Mr. Lapham. "When people get to be of the older demographic, when they get to be 50, they tend to read history and watch the History Channel. When I conceived the quarterly I thought that would be the audience, but I was surprised to find out how many young people liked it."  read more »

The New York Times has posted a preview of the Book Review's lead review from this week: Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.'s George Plimpton oral biography, George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Few Unappreciative Observers. (An oral biography of George Plimpton: Capital idea!)

It's hard finding just one thing to quote from the long, admiring review, which takes into account a man with a long, admirable life, but here's one little nugget.

Per Mr. Carter:

I remember getting a call some years ago from a television casting agent looking for a patrician type to play an editor who liked to go shooting rats in Central Park. I asked the agent if she had approached anyone else. As it happened, she had. Lewis Lapham said it was beneath him. George Plimpton agreed to do it, but he had a scheduling conflict. So she ended up with me. And the show went off the air within the year.  read more »

Brooke Geahan, the 20-something founder of the Accompanied Literary Society, has made a career of throwing scruffy readers and writers together with scenesters and socialites, and using the dim light of glamorous venues to make them look significantly more attractive than they might elsewhere. She was up to her old tricks on Wednesday, Sept. 25, when the Accompanied Literary Society threw a party in conjunction with Diesel, in the penthouse of a new luxury condominium in Tribeca called One York, at the intersection of Canal and Sixth Avenue.

The gathering was in honor of "Flash Fiction," a public art project of sorts in which 10 short stories—commissioned from authors such as Jonathan Ames, Colum McCann, Sloane Crosley, Jonathan Lethem, and Jay McInerney—were screened on the side of the building.  read more »

Last night, in in a townhouse near the Flatiron building, the very young editors of Lapham's Quarterly were embarrassed. They were aged 23, 24 and 28, and, by coincidence, they all wore the same H&M suit: dark, pinstriped and under $200. Each wore a red tie.

"We did it and didn't realize it," said Elias Altman, the 23-year-old, who is the back-page editor and has the baby face of a choir boy. "We thought maybe we should do a song and dance."

To diffuse the situation, there was a suggestion Media Mob talk to Lewis Lapham, the quarterly's editor. Mr. Lapham, what do you think of the crowd?  read more »

Lately, there’s been plenty of activity over at Soho’s New Museum Building, located at 1  read more »

Lately, there’s been plenty of activity over at Soho’s New Museum Building, located at 158 Merce  read more »

The New York Times is considering pulling up stakes in its great venture into television.  read more »

The New York Times is considering pulling up stakes in its great venture into television.    read more »

After wasting lazy days on a porch in the Berkshires, drinking gin and reading the North Adams Transcript, it's time to catch up on how our colleagues spent this last weekend in August.

Of course, summer's almost over and ambitious Ivy Leaguers ditch their resume-building internships for collegiate life. So it's fitting that the New York Times reports on the prestigious doorman internship (aka "superintendent's assistant") at tony 1088 Park Avenue. Amongst many thankless tasks, you sweep sidewalks, stay up for a couple days at a time, and are insulted by wealthy residents. For that you get $14 an hour and a headstart on writing your own Barbara Ehrenreich-style class conscious memoir. Calling Lewis Lapham!

Apparently, you can actually entice a New Yorker to voluntarily give up a rent-stabilized apartment. It usually involves a large cash buyout. Surprise, surprise.

These are good days for those young, upwardly mobile types who love organic cooking (but never cook), and enjoy hitting on health-obsessed strangers while pouring a generous helping of chickpeas. Now looking to conquer Houston Street, Whole Foods plans to expand its dining section in the massive 76,000-square-foot store coming to the Avalon Christie. Just to point out, that's over 25,000-square-feet bigger than the Union Square location.

If you've been in Williamsburg lately, you couldn't miss a menacing crane high above the main drag, or as a New York Times headline writer dubbed it, "a harbinger of tallness." What's really scary is that the crane is only being used for a 14-story mixed-use building. Just wait until those sure-to-be lovely 40-story structures tower over the artist (and trustfunder) enclave. Yikes.

The Daily News offers a bit of comparison shopping between the Duke Semans mansion ($50 million) and a single-family home in Staten Island ($164,900). One has a sweeping staircase, while the other lets you live near Redman. Obviously, in the housing boom, cash rules everything around me.

In other celebrity news, Eddie Murphy just cut the asking price of his New Jersey mansion down to $27 million, following a previous price reduction for his upstate farmhouse.

Lastly, in an article about the court case involving starchitect David Childs and the allegedly stolen Freedom Tower design, the author makes this unpleasant statement: "For once, an accusation of architectural plagiarism had taken on a life beyond cocktail party chatter and snippy blogs."

Life beyond?  read more »

-Michael Calderone

"Being old-fashioned, I remember when a museum cost nothing," the artist Will Bennet said as guests  read more »

Despite war, terror and economic anxiety, the late-summer stretch of the Presidential campaign has k  read more »

Ten years ago, the assertion that Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters and their ilk were t  read more »

Jeanne Moreau: La Bitch Is BackAt the reception in the French Embassy on April 23 for the release of  read more »

The End of the World , edited by Lewis Lapham. Thomas Dunne-St. Martin's Press, 297 pages, $24.95.  read more »

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the WeekThe most strangely poetic of crime thrillers, known chicly thes  read more »